Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Whenever I hear or read someone going on about ‘The Good Old Days’,
I take a deep breath, bite my tongue, and try to stop my eyes rolling
heavenward in exasperation. I guess I must look pretty funny, Huh? Sometimes,
despite my best efforts, I cannot help saying a few or a lot of words, most of
them with a sharp-sounding edge. Guess I sound pretty funny too.

It pays to remember that in The Good Old Days, one’s employer had rather
more power over one than is possible today (for those of us in the lucky parts
of the world that is.) In olden times, for example, the servants in wealthy
households worked very long days, with little or no time off, and received little
more than their keep. In the eighteenth century, one expectation on the part of
the servants was that their ‘keep’ would include plumb pudding regularly on the
menu . We associate plum pudding now with Christmas, but it was once a staple –
because the ingredients, and the pudding itself, had good keeping qualities.
Plum pudding may not have been a daily dish for most, but nor was it a rare
treat.

The most fascinating source of information on life on the farm and
the estate is The Country Housewife’s
Family Companion (1750) by William Ellis. He describes how one Master of
the household made some moves towards economy in the matter of his servants’
food, but not to the point of meanness.

How a Lord’s Family-Servants had Apple-Pudding made for
them instead of Plumb-Pudding.

The Lord I mean here, was one that was a true Œconomist,
yet kept a good House both for eating and drinking, for I have known him to
keep two Men Cooks at a Time. However, to save extraordinary Expense, amongst his
other Management, he obliged his many common Servants to eat no other Pudding
for seven Weeks together than Apple boil’d Pudding, which with other Victuals
gave them a full pleasant Meal; the Apple-Pudding was made thus: - the Dough or
Crust was made with Wheat-meal, and either Butter, Suet, or Kitchen Fat, rolled
thick to wrap over Apples chopt into small Pieces. When this was done, the
Pudding was tied up in a Cloth, and boiled three or four Hours. Then they eat
it with Sugar in melted Butter put over the Apples. This was done to save the Charge
of Plumbs &c.

Monday, July 30, 2012

There was a great deal of interest in mermaids in the seventeenth century.
Sailors and coastal inhabitants reported sightings of the strange creatures, showmen
exhibited cannily crafted specimens for a suitable fee, and the clergy discussed
whether or not they had souls.

If it could be determined that merfolk had souls, then eating them
would have been an act of cannibalism, and a great sin. I don’t know if the
clerics of the time ever satisfactorily settled the debate, but a cook of the
time certainly had some fun with the idea. Common belief was that human flesh
tasted like pork, so if one wanted to simulate cooked mermaid, it would make
sense to use that animal as the substitute.

Mermaid pie had its brief time in the culinary limelight in the
seventeenth century. The recipe appeared in several cookery books of the time,
and then disappeared, apparently forever. I like to think that the cook who
invented the concept had a sense of humour, and wanted to give his guests a
momentary frisson of horror and disbelief when the dish was revealed. I
certainly hope that a slight persisting sense of naughtiness added piquancy to
what would otherwise have been a fairly standard seventeenth century pig pie.

Mermaid-Pye.

Take a Pig, scald it, and bone it; and having dried it well with a
Cloath, season it with beaten Nutmeg, Pepper, and chop’d Sage; then take two
Neats-Tongues; when dried and cold after boiling, and slice them in lengths,
and as thick as a Half-Crown, and lay a quarter of your Pig in a square or
round Pye, and the slices of the Tongue on it; then another quarter, and more
Tongue: and thus do four times double, and lay over all these some slices of
Bacon, scatter a few Cloves, put in some pieces of Butter and Bay-leaves, then
bake it; and when it is so, fill it up with pieces of sweet Butter, and make
your Past white of the Butter and Flower. This Pig, or Mermaid-Pye, so called,
is to be eaten cold.

The family dictionary, or,
Houshold [sic] companion …(1695) by William Salmon.

Quotation for the Day.

Men may come and men may go ..... but Pie goes on for ever.George Augustus Sala, 'America Revisited' (1882)

Friday, July 27, 2012

I note that there has been a revival of interest in Scottish (or is
it Irish?) ‘heather beer’ in recent times. The method of preparation of this
almost-mythical beverage was said to have been a national secret amongst the
ancient Celtic race of Picts, the secret dying out with its last leader, who
gave up his sons rather than the recipe to their conquerors. The story was
immortalised in a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I give his version to you
at the end of the post. Here is the legend as repeated in Notes and Queries (Oxford University Press, 1863)

“The name of
this place is Garrywhin, and a tradition exists in connection with it, which
says that here the last of the Picts existed. The story goes on to say that the
race of Picts was reduced to three persons - an old blind man and his two sons;
but before continuing the story it is necessary to mention that a notion still
exists that the Picts made ale from heather, and that it can still be made,
only we want the knowledge of any barm or yeast suited for it. Now the Picts
were said to have guarded this secret with great care from the race that
succeeded them, and it seems that these three poor Picts were much persecuted
by their conquerors, who wished to get possession of their secret. At last the
old man, worried almost to death by being so frequently urged to reveal what
barm would suit ‘heather crop,’ consented to tell on condition that his two
sons should first be put to death. To this proposal the cruel conquerors
readily consented. The sons were slain, but the old man, wishing some of his
oppressors to shake hands after they had completed their bargain, they became
suspicious of his intentions, and held out to him the bone of a horse's leg,
which, with a firm grasp of his old withered hand, he crushed to powder. Made
aware by this that it was not over safe to shake hands with the old fellow,
they kept at a respectful distance, but still insisted that he should now
reveal his secret according to bargain, but they could get nothing out of him
but the doggrel couplet which we often still hear repeated -

'Search
Brochwhin well out and well in,

And barm for
heather crop you'll find therein,'

The place
mentioned here as Brochwhin is a glen close by, and the tradition is still
believed."

Another version of the story has it that the old man had but one
son, and (fearing that his son would relinquish the secret) made the bargain –
and then, the sacrifice done, ‘the stern
Pict told his enemies that they might also put him to death, for he could never
be prevailed on to disclose a secret known only to himself’, in response to which, ‘the enraged Scots, as
may be supposed, speedily sacrificed the obstinate captive.’

Other stories say it was the Danes who took the method of making
heather beer to Ireland in the ninth century, or that perhaps it was an ancient
Roman invention. We will likely never know the truth of its origins, but
whatever they were, the concept was remarkably enduring.

It seems that the recipe did not completely die out with the Picts
however, as heather beer may still have been made in some isolated regions of
Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The Rev. John
Lightfoot', author of the extraordinarily comprehensive Flora Scotica in 1777 wrote of the many uses to which the canny
Scots put the common heather. He said:

“Formerly the young tops are said to have been used to brew a kind
of ale, and even now I was informed that the inhabitants of Isla and Jura still continue to brew a very potable liquor by mixing
two-thirds of the tops of hather [sic] to one-third of malt.”

Heather beer persisted yet further. A correspondent to the edition
of Notes and Queries mentioned above,
published in 1863, said:

“Heather beer, or ale, is still occasionally brewed in Scotland. I
have drunk it within these last four years in the Lamermoors. It is brewed from
the heather blossoms, and is very light, pleasant, and sparkling.”

I don’t know what happened to the production of heather beer between this
mid-nineteenth century report and the present day, so cannot say whether the
recently publicised commercial venture to manufacture it represents the
resurrection of a completely dead method of beer-making, or the renaissance of
an almost-dead one. It has generated sufficient interest however that the
Guardian recently published a recipe for what they called a ‘Viking’ heather
beer, which you can find here.

As my own recipe offering for the day, I give you a nice take on the
idea of Welsh Rarebit, from a classic Scottish cookery book:

Boiled Cheese.

Grate a quarter of a pound
of good cheese, put it into a sauce-pan, with a bit of butter the size of a
nutmeg, and half a tea-cupful of milk, stir it over the fire till it boil, and
then add a well-beaten egg; mix it all together, put it into a small dish, and
brown it before the fire; or serve it without being browned.

The Practice of Cookery: Adapted to
the Business of Every Day Life (Edinburgh, 1830),

by
Mrs. Dalgairns

Quotation for the Day.

The story of heather ale was
immortalised by the writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I keep finding interesting bits and pieces in the various volumes of
The Food Journal: a review of social and
sanitary economy, and monthly record of food and public health. Volume 4
was the source of yesterday’s story. Today I want to share with you a short piece
from Volume 3, published in 1873, which concerns an early experiment in growing
tea in Britain.

The produce of the tea plant is a matter of so much
national importance now, that we may be excused if we refer to a letter which
appeared many years ago in the British
Journal on tea cultivation. In it Mr. Routsey says:- "Having found the
Chinese green tea plant (Camelia viridis)
to be more hardy than some other shrubs which endure the open air in this
neighbourhood, I have tried it upon the Welsh mountains, and found it succeed.
I planted it in a part of Breconshire, not far from the source of the Usk,
about 1,000 ft. above the level of the sea, and higher than the limits of the
native woods - consisting of elder and birch. It endured the last winter, and
was not affected by the frost of May. It has now made several vigorous shoots,
and I have no doubt of its thriving very well." Perhaps some of our readers
could inform us what was the result of this open-air experiment, and whether it
ever happened to be tried elsewhere with success within the British Island?

I too, would like to know the result of this experiment. Was any tea
actually produced? Is there anything left of this little experimental
plantation? I am totally ignorant about the lifespan of Camelia viridis, but I do hope that somewhere above the treeline on
a hillside in Wales, near the source of the Usk, there are a few straggly,
neglected tea bushes.

It is interesting that tea is in fact being grown in Britain today. There
are small commercial plantations in Cornwall and in Wales (in Pembrokeshire),
in areas where apparently the microclimate is similar to that of Darjeeling.

It is said that global warming has enabled this new horticultural success,
as it is supposedly assisting the renaissance in English wine-production, but
it cannot explain the apparent early success of the 1870’s experiment, can it?

While we try to solve the mystery of the Welsh tea experiment, I give
you some recipes from On Uncle Sam’s
Water Wagon: 500 recipes for delicious drinks, which can be made at home
(New York, 1919.) The book was written all those years ago in response to
Prohibition, and proves that flavoured teas are not a yuppie modern tea-shop
invention.

Tea

First scald the teapot. Allow from half to a full teaspoonful of tea
to each cup, according to variety used. Pour freshly drawn boiling water over
the tea, and allow to stand from three to five minutes. English breakfast tea
should stand at least five minutes before it is served. Serve with sugar,
cream, lemon or orange.

Tea à la Commodore

Make tea according to preceding recipe, and serve with sugar and
three cloves to each cup.

Tea à la Biltmore

Serve tea sweetened with red and white rock candy instead of sugar.
A slice of lemon may be

added.

Honolulu Tea

Make a syrup of one half cup of juice from preserved pineapple to
two tablespoonfuls of

sugar, and simmer cubes of pineapple in it until the syrup is nearly
absorbed by fruit. Serve

three cubes to each cup of hot tea, and more sugar if desired.

Russian Tea

Scald earthenware teapot with boiling water and put in two
teaspoonfuls of tea, pour over

boiling water, filling the pot one fourth full, and let stand three
minutes. Then fill pot full of

boiling water and let brew five minutes. In serving, dilute with hot
water, and put a slice of

lemon in each cup. Preserved strawberries or cherries may be added.

Tea à la Mitchell

Serve a spoonful of orange marmalade to each cup of hot tea.

Sherbet Tea

Place a spoonful of lemon sherbet in a glass with two tablespoonfuls
of lemon syrup and a

dash of acid phosphate. Nearly fill the glass with cold tea, and add
a little cracked ice and soda

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

We in the lucky parts of the world are told that we
waste about one fifth of the food that we buy, and that when we waste food, we
also waste the resources that went into producing that food. It is a serious accusation,
but does it point to a modern problem?

Often, in magazine articles and suchlike, we are
pointed to the wisdom of our housewife-ancestors, who wasted nothing in their
kitchens for reasons both moral and economical. I have referred to this ‘waste
not, want not’ attitude of our predecessors, and included some of their
practical hints to utilise every last scrap of food, in a number of blog posts
over the years.

Waste is not just a sin perpetrated in the kitchen,
however. An article in The Food Journal:
a review of social and sanitary economy, and monthly record of food and public
health (1874) reported the following:-

Note that this estimate only applies to the city of
London, which had a population of 3,254,266 in 1871. Food inspectors in other
large cities in Britain presumably condemned similarly large quantities of food.

This large-scale waste was attributable to a number of
issues. Clearly, the actions of unscrupulous butchers and slaughterhouse-men who
put up the flesh of diseased beasts for sale were partly to blame, but the
larger culprit must surely have been the lack of refrigeration?

On Monday, I said that the word ‘burnt’ in relation to
a recipe did not sit comfortably with me. I am also uncomfortable with the idea
of cooking ‘fawn’ – although venison is very fine with me. Such is the emotional
power of words. In recognition of the twelve fawns whose great sacrifice was
wasted in 1873, I give you the following recipe:

A
Fawn.

Skin your fawn, and make a
stuffing in the following manner: rub the crumb of a penny loaf through a
cullender, pick and chop half a pound of beef-suet, pick and chop a handful of
parsley, some lemon-peel and sweet herbs chopped fine, seasoned with pepper and
salt, and half a nutmeg grated, break in two eggs, and mix them all up
together; put it in the belly, sew it up, truss it, spit it, roast it before a
good fire, and baste it well all the time it is roasting; (a middling-sized one
will take one hour and a half, a large one two hours) when it is done baste it
with butter, sprinkle some salt on it, and dredge it with flour; take it up and
put it in a hot dish, with gravy in the dish, and mint sauce in a boat.
N. B. A young kid is roasted in the same manner.

The English Art of Cookery, According
to the Present Practice (1788) by Richard Briggs.